


Settled for Less

by bar2d2s



Category: The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3929866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bar2d2s/pseuds/bar2d2s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Owen bitches about things, mostly about how he can’t seem to get laid on the regular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settled for Less

Sometimes, Owen wishes he could just get the girl. Once. That’s all he’s asking.

The bar scene’s no help at all. The last two times he’d attempted to pick up a woman in a bar, he’d ended up being tortured. Not that he couldn’t roll with those kinks, but there wasn’t any  _safe word_ , and that kind of ruined it. Then there was his taste in women. 

When the three B’s of babeliness (blonde, bubbly, belly-shirt) proved useless, he’d tried going after a different brand of hottitude. See exhibit A for why that ended up failing miserably. He was doomed.

“Yeah, but, the thing is? There isn’t a man alive who’s been successful with women one hundred percent of the time.”

Doomed enough that drinking with the Rogues seemed like a good idea. Doomed enough that  _being_  a Rogue again seemed like a good idea. Still, Mardon had a point. He’d managed to have a couple of meaningless hookups after he stomped his Super hangup into oblivion, but that wasn’t what he  _meant_.

“No, but. Listen. What I’m trying to say here is, look.” Think. Think, then speak. “If guys like  _Deadshot_  and the  _Shade_  have the time and the energy and the luck to have snared wives or girlfriends or whatever, why can’t I manage it? I mean, even that creep Dr. Sivana was married once. And his wife was  _way_  out of his league…and they’ve got four kids!” Bad guys got the girl sometimes, that was the point he was trying to make. Mark snorted.

“Shit, you want a kid? Man,  _I’ve_  got a kid. Never get to see him, either, because he was adopted by a cop’s widow. Hell, his mom was a cop, too. You want a girl? McCulloch had a steady girl for a while…until she found out he was a criminal.” He took a long draw off his bottle. “Much as I hate to say it, the method Cold’s been swearing by is pretty goddamn effective.” And that was all he had to say on the matter.

They circle subjects for a while, touching on everything from the current state of Iron Heights post-Wolfe, to Owen’s time with the Outsiders, and then Axel crashes through the skylight of their warehouse hideout like a bat  _into_  hell, and they pause. It’s been raining, not Mark’s doing, and the kid is soaked. He shoves the ultra-thick plate of bulletproof glass back into place from where it swung down, effectively blocking out the storm that threatened to rush in, and Mark seemed almost disappointed.

“S'raining.” Axel says lamely, jerking his thumb up at the ceiling as he passes them to change into some dry clothes.

“We noticed, thanks.” Owen calls after him. It’s been almost two weeks since the Rogues let him back in, and the habit of stifling his sarcasm he’d picked up from Nightwing still hadn’t gone away. When he looks back to his drinking partner, Owen notices that the taller man is eyeing him. He doesn’t like that. “What?” His question comes with a sharp glare.

Mark’s eyes don’t immediately drop back to his beer, and that’s another thing he hates. With the Outsiders, showing even the slightest bit of backbone usually got the other guys to back off. It wasn’t like that in the Rogues. If he’d been talking to Len, he’d have probably gotten a fat lip.

“Nothing, man.” Mark said eventually, lobbing his empty bottle at Axel’s head. It was deflected, batted out of the air as though the kid took that kind of shit all the time. Though, considering the company he kept, he probably did. “You going to the fridge?”

“Am now.” Owen was starting to wonder if the other legacy was all talk. You couldn’t shut the kid up in the field, but back at base, he was like a little mouse. Scurried off to his room at the first hint of trouble. He’s back quickly enough, with a soda for himself and a new bottle for Mark. Owen hadn’t said anything, so he’d been ignored.

Except…he hadn’t. As Mark got to work on what was, by Owen’s count, his fifth beer, Axel settled himself down on the comfy end of the broken couch with a laptop to do some web-surfing. Every now and then, his eyes would leave his screen, darting between Mark and Owen before returning.

The beer proves to be the very end of Mark’s endurance, and he drags himself off to bed, tripping over his own feet a few times as he stumbled down the hall. Over on the couch, Axel has his headphones in, but as Mark passes, he quickly pulls them out, closing his laptop and sticking it under one of the stained cushions.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, before Owen stands up to get himself another beer. Mark had been drinking for ages before he’d gotten in, so Owen was only on his third. Bypassing the card table and its hard folding chairs, he plopped down onto the couch on the end opposite of Axel. “So.”

“So.” Axel drew the word out, like a snake experimenting with vowels, and Owen grinned. Anissa used to do that, when she had something to say but didn’t want to just come out and say it. “Why’d you come back?” Owen shrugged.

“The Outsiders went back under Batman’s control, and he didn’t want me. The Suicide Squad kept expecting me to screw shit up, so Waller canned me. Said I was a ‘ticking time bomb of eventual failure’.” He scowled, and Axel looked down at his hands. “So I came back here. And you? They just let you back in?”

“Provisional basis.” The blonde murmured, twanging the tab on his soda rhythmically. “Gotta prove I belong here, gotta show 'em why they can’t do without me.” He jerked his head at the card table. “What d'you guys even  _have_  to talk about?”

Owen found himself opening his mouth, the whole story spilling out. His completely inappropriate thing for Supergirl more than fucking up how he looked in the eyes of his former teammates. Being kidnapped and tortured  _twice_  because he thought mainly with his beer-sodden dick. All the crap Lawton talked about his dad while they worked together, as if he was just expecting Owen to snap and throw a punch. How he’d tried to just go back to being a normal guy, but the call of his gear was just too loud to ignore. How he wanted  _so much_  to just have someone to hang out with, make out with. Someone who was always happy to see him, someone who he’d always be happy to see. Because it’d be something  _normal_ , something almost taboo in its normality in their world.

Third beer, some called it. Owen called it his truth serum.

To his credit, Axel didn’t laugh. Nodded and made the right noises in the right places, even. Like he actually gave a shit. Finally, though, Owen’s tirade came to an end.

“…and that’s your cue to call me a sentimental idiot.” Snorting away a grin, Axel stretched his arms above his head.

“Nah, that’s not what you are. You just don’t wanna be alone, that’s understandable. But I don’t think you’re going about it the right way.” His shirt rode up slightly, just in time to be greeted with the faint pop of a shoulder joint. Axel sighed in relief, rolling his shoulders before dropping his arms back down. “Ever figure you might be looking in the wrong places?”

Owen ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. He thought he’d already gone over this. “I  _can’t_  date a normal chick, she’d have no way to defend herself if something went down.” Axel snorted again, and stood. As he passed by Owen, he ruffled his hair a bit, pushing it back down so that ginger locks hung in front of confused green eyes.

“What I mean is,” He said, one hand on the entrance to the hallway, head twisted back to keep unwavering eye contact with the man still on the couch. “Instead of driving yourself crazy trying to get the girl, why not try and get the guy?” With that, he vanished, and Owen heard a door close a few seconds later.

Huh.  _Huh._

He sat back against the couch, mulling it over. Without thinking, one hand made its way back to his hair. Huh. The golden mohawk, the devil-couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude, that hideous shirt riding over a toned stomach whenever he stretched. At least Axel had his B’s in order. Owen grinned to himself, finishing the last of his beer.

What the hell, he’d dated worse.


End file.
